Washington
has asked Moscow not to conduct airstrikes against al-Nusra Front,
which is Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, for fear that members of the
“moderate opposition” could also be hit, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov has reported.

“They
[the US] are telling us not to hit it [al-Nusra Front], because there
are also ‘normal’ opposition groups [on those
territories],” Lavrov
said in an interview with local Russian media that was published on
the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

The
minister also stressed that “such
opposition groups should leave terrorist positions,” adding
that “we
have long agreed on that.” Russia
first set a deadline for the “moderate” opposition
to leave territories occupied by al-Nusra Front extremists, but then
agreed to give them more time to withdraw.

In the interview,
Lavrov said that Russia believes that taking specific and more
effective measures to fight the Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL)
and al-Nusra Front terrorist groups should be the top priority for
Russia and the US if the Syrian crisis is to be resolved.

“It
is important to provide humanitarian access to the settlements
blocked by one side or another, to secure the ceasefire and to
prevent its violation, as well as to launch the political process…
but, as important as these goals are, terrorism is our common threat,
and there should be no doubt about that,” he
said, adding that, in the meantime, al-Nusra Front has been
attempting to merge with other armed opposition groups.

Lavrov
also said that the political process in Syria is being held back by
radical opposition groups that refuse to come to the negotiating
table and set preconditions for peace talks. He added that it is
important to set aside these demands and focus on the fight against
terrorism.

The
minister also emphasized that Russia and the US are involved in a
close and intensive dialog on Syria that includes regular telephone
calls between Lavrov and his US counterpart, John Kerry, and a
video-conference channel set up between the Russian Center for
Reconciliation in Syria located at the Khmeimim airbase in Latakia
and the US base in the Jordanian capital of Amman, as well as a joint
US-Russian center in Geneva.

Lavrov
had held a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State John
Kerry at the initiative of the US side earlier the same day, the
Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The
two ministers discussed “the
fight against ISIS and the need to urgently distance the moderate
opposition from the Jabhat al-Nusra group, as well as efforts to cut
off the flow of weapons and militants coming from abroad to beef up
terrorist organizations,” the
statement said.

In
the meantime, Kerry, who is in Paris, told journalists that he had
discussed the upsurge in violence in Syria during the phone call with
Lavrov, explaining that the two had worked specifically on “ways
to try to strengthen the enforcement and accountability for this
cessation,” AP
reported.

In
the meantime, the US State Department said that Washington has asked
Russia to be “more careful” in targeting its airstrikes against
al-Nusra Front, as hitting civilians or opposition groups while
attacking the jihadists could eventually give more support to the
terrorist groups.

“[The
US State] Secretary conveyed to Russia and the Assad regime that they
need to carefully distinguish between these terrorist groups
operating on the ground and those parties to the cessation of
hostilities,” US
State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said during a briefing
on Friday, adding that the US agrees that IS and al-Nusra Front“pose
a real threat to the security on the ground in Syria.”

‘US trying to play
both sides to continue Syrian conflict’

By
designating militants who share the same areas and positions with
terrorists as “moderate opposition,” the US is actually providing
the terrorists with a safe haven, Henningsen reasoned. The terrorist
groups are profiting from such neighborly relations the same way they
make use of civilians.

“The
classification of moderate rebels is a type of the human shield,” he
said.

Hennigsen
claims that the lack of a clear signal to the rebel groups coming
from Washington is the result of a deliberate strategic choice made
by the US government, which wants the military conflict to drag on.

“All
this talk of co-mingling, this is all double-speak,” he
noted, adding that Washington is “trying
to play both sides this to continue this conflict” and
has no intention of actually resolving the issue.

Why
Moscow is preparing to return to Syria

There
have been indications recently that the Russians are preparing to
resume operations against armed factions in Syria.

No
countdown is currently underway for [a renewed] Russian military
intervention [in Syria]. This intervention will probably never be
renewed, at least not with the same momentum seen in the months prior
to the ever-vacillating truce. As a matter of fact, it seems that
only the Russians had counted on this intervention and believe that
their achievements were sufficient to successfully embark on a
political process in Geneva, which also did not materialize

Indeed,
Russia keeps extending the truce [in Syria], although Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Shoigu had determined May 25 the expiry date of this
truce. However, this is the first time that converging signs indicate
a relaunching of part of the Russian military operation — with
renewed coordination with the Syrian army — ever since Moscow
unilaterally decided to halt the Aleppo operation and impose a truce,
even on Damascus, which reluctantly agreed to it. It should be noted
that this truce is still stirring tension between Russia and the
Syrian regime.

Moreover,
a feeling of bitterness prevails within the Syrian army and regime
about their loss of an opportunity to achieve a great victory,
particularly in Aleppo’s northern countryside, and to upset the
balance of power in the Syrian war as a whole.

Despite
the major achievements [of the Russian intervention] on the ground in
the countrysides of Latakia and in Aleppo’s southern, western and
eastern countrysides, [the Syrian regime] failed to wrest control of
key cities such as Idlib or Jisr al-Shughur and achieve final victory
over the armed factions.

The
Russian intervention has indeed failed to achieve the operational
goals announced by the Russians themselves in November 2015. The
Russians had stressed the imperative need to reach the Turkish-Syrian
border, setting the closing of border crossings and supply routes
with Turkey as a precondition to any solution. However, the Russians
renounced this approach. The Russian truce has allowed armed
factions, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to reorganize
and rearm their ranks and rebuild most of the infrastructure
destroyed by the joint Russo-Syrian operations.

Thus,
it can be said that for the first time the military and the
diplomatic positions have converged on the need to restrengthen
[Russia’s] credibility. This might pave the way for a partial
re-adoption of the military option.

Yet
this time around the goals of any [renewed Russian] military
operation will not be as clear or as ambitious as the previous ones.
This time, the military intervention will focus on isolating Jabhat
al-Nusra from other armed groups. The Russians will put their Sukhoi
fighter jets to the test and bet on direct ground offensives to
weaken rather than defeat Syrian armed factions. It should be noted
that isolating Jabhat al-Nusra from other armed factions, which is a
difficult and complicated objective, would strike a painful blow to
those factions since Jabhat al-Nusra’s military and ideological
might form the backbone around which those factions unite.

Thus,
the positions of the Russian administration’s military and
diplomatic wings on the need to return to the battlefront fall in
line with the position of Shoigu, which considered that the truce
option has proved to be a failure and that a deadline must be given
to the armed factions to distance themselves from Jabhat al-Nusra
Front. This also seems to be the position of Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov, who stated that “Moscow had not abandoned its
decision to attack the armed factions that failed to abide by the
truce in Syria.”

In
an interview published May 31 in Russia’s daily Komsomolskaya
Pravda, Lavrov said that the deadline given by Moscow to the
militants was about to expire. He added, “The US asked us to extend
the deadline for several days prior to the implementation of the plan
we had set in advance, whereby any party that breaches the truce
would become a legitimate target, irrespective of whether this party
is included on the lists of terrorist organizations or not. The
Americans requested us to give them a few additional days to present
us with their response, but the extended deadline expires this week.”

The
foregoing is an indication that helps explain the decision-making
process with regard to Syria. This process is affected by a tug of
war taking place between the advisers of President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian military support the return to the battlefield, while a
large part of Russia’s Foreign Ministry officials and officials
overseeing the political process, such as Lavrov and Mikhail
Bogdanov, believe that work must continue toward achieving a
[political] settlement; in fact, they are banking on President Barack
Obama’s desire to defeat the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Indeed,
Russian diplomats are convinced that this is the best [political]
settlement that they will get — one that will allow them to
maintain a presence in Syria and reach a political solution before
the end of the year when President Obama’s administration will be
replaced by a new and more hawkish successor.

But
Russian diplomats find themselves facing the US administration’s
continued refusal of any coordination with the Russians in military
operations targeting their mutual foe, IS, whether in Raqqa or
northern Syria. The best possible US cooperation the United States
offers is a joint US-Russian presence in Syrian airspace.

In
that context, US warplanes dominate the sky over regions east of the
Euphrates River, while Russian air cover blankets the region west of
the river. Moreover, neither during Russia’s military operation nor
after the truce went into effect did the Americans stop re-arming
militant factions. The United States even supplied these factions
with nearly 3,000 tons of weapons, offered them training and
organized and coordinated their operations in a bid to wear out the
Russians in Syria. It should be noted that this has been a clear
Obama policy objective aimed to prevent embarking on any political
solution as part of the United States' desire to isolate Russia.
Washington, in fact, had even asked Russia not to target Jabhat
al-Nusra’s positions.

Lavrov
also stated that in one of their numerous telephone calls he asked
his US counterpart, John Kerry, to explain why the US-led
international coalition stopped targeting the terrorists in Syria, to
which Kerry reiterated the same traditional justifications — which
according to Lavrov are based on a bizarre [US] vision that terrorist
positions are mixed with the positions of good guys who should not be
targeted.

It
seems that the bickering within the Russian administration on
resuming the military intervention in Syria is on the verge of ending
while the current US administration is entering its final months in
office.

Although
the mobilization of armed factions in northern Syria has not
undergone any change worth mentioning, Lavrov has grown convinced
that the Americans are deceiving the Russians and that the
international coalition is standing idly by as terrorists and arms
flow through the Syrian-Turkish border. [It seems that] Lavrov has
come to believe that the terrorists are undoubtedly preparing to
launch an offensive in violation of all international conventions and
UN Security Council resolutions.

Without
stirring a buzz similar to that of their first military intervention
in Syria, the Russians this week disembarked ground forces and
paratroopers in the port of Tartus to support more than 3,000 Russian
volunteers dispatched to the region in the past few weeks, in a bid
to revive coordination with the Syrian army.

This
represents yet another additional indication that a wide-ranging
operation is being prepared. This [operation] may include Raqqa,
where the Russians want to have a presence on the ground to rival
that of the Americans and Kurds. This may also include the
countryside of Aleppo, where the Iranians are pushing for a major
operation aimed to cut supply routes open to the east and retake the
village of Khan Tuman, where [Iran] suffered a major setback.

In
that regard, Syrian sources stated that the Russian joint command
staff, which coordinated aerial support operations last fall, had
returned to the Hmeimim military base in Latakia province to begin
preparations for new operations.

Syria:
The U.S. Is Unwilling To Settle - Russia Returns For Another Round

The
Obama administration does not want peace in Syria. The Russians
finally have to admit to themselves that the U.S. is no partner for a
continuation of a cease fire, a coordinated attack against the
Islamic State and al-Qaeda and for peace in Syria. Indeed, as
Lavrov explains,
the U.S. has again asked to
spare al-Qaeda from Russian air strikes even as two UN Security
Council resolutions demand its eradication. Huge supply
convoys (vid)
from Turkey are again going to the "rebels" who will, as
always, share them with al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

The
current renewed Syrian Arab Army attack towards Raqqa is being
obstructed not only by sandstorms but also by a timely attack of
al-Qaeda, Ahrar al Sham and Turkestan Islamist Party
forces against government
positions in the south Aleppo countryside.

More
than 1,000 militants have begun an offensive against Syrian army
positions southwest of Aleppo, the Russian ceasefire monitoring
center in Syria said in a statement on Saturday.

The
center also reported civilians in Aleppo as saying armed groups
partly made up of Turkish soldiers had appeared north of the city.

The
exactly same scheme happened in March and April when a move towards
eastern Syrian by the Syrian army had to be stopped to prevent
further losses against al-Qaeda south of Aleppo. It seems obvious
that these moves U.S. supported forces are planned to prevent any
gains of the Syrian government in the east.

"Lavrov
expressed concern about attempts to delay the resumption of political
negotiations under various pretexts," the [Russian foreign]
ministry said.

As
the U.S. is unwilling to settle the Syria conflict Russia will have
to retake the initiative.

Is
this a trap? Does the U.S. want Russia to sink into a quagmire in
Syria? That is certainly a possibility but it is hard to see how this
could happen when Russia comes back with a vengeance and strikes hard
and fast.

Without
stirring a buzz similar to that of their first military intervention
in Syria, the Russians this week disembarked ground forces and
paratroopers in the port of Tartus to support more than 3,000 Russian
volunteers dispatched to the region in the past few weeks, in a bid
to revive coordination with the Syrian army....Syrian
sources stated that the Russian joint command staff, which
coordinated aerial support operations last fall, had returned to the
Hmeimim military base in Latakia province to begin preparations for
new operations.

One
can only hope that the Russian leadership has learned its lesson.
That it will not stop to pursue the enemy for no political gain when
it is again, as it likely will soon be, on the run.

Although
the percentage of truly committed “zapadniks” in Russia is not
high, around 15% at most, I do think the data must have taken a sharp
turn down within the confidence interval. The figures for last year
where 4%.

Incidentally,
according to the independent Russian polling organization Levada,
whereas positive impressions of the US as a country (not the
leadership as with Gallup) plummeted
to a record low of 12% by 2015,
since then there has been a
marginal recovery back
up to around 20%. So, not a major change, but a minor uptick
nonetheless.

From
the full Gallup report, here is a list of the ten countries with the
dimmest view of the US leadership (China was not included in the
survey):

.

+

-

Syria

20%

71%

Iran

19%

51%

Lebanon

18%

72%

Serbia

16%

56%

Yemen

15%

69%

Egypt

10%

62%

Belarus

9%

67%

Palestine

9%

79%

Kazakhstan

8%

70%

Russia

1%

89%

So
that’s basically Russia+ and various Middle East countries it has
bombed/invaded/tried to color revolution.

Iraq
is a strong net negative, but at 30% approval, nowhere near the
bottom of the list. Even Ukraine is a net negative, with 35% approval
and 40% disapproval.

Countries
with the most positive outlooks on the US leadership include a whole
bunch of African countries topped by Congo-Brazzaville (80%); Kosovo
(85%), Albania (74%), and the UK (65%) in Europe; and Cambodia (74%)
in Asia.